


Across the Veil

by Gingervivi



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, fuck canon and lore, i'm just finally getting a fun idea i had on paper, my city now, my lavellan as an ancient elf lol, this is just for fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-08-31 01:21:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8557129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gingervivi/pseuds/Gingervivi
Summary: Cullen is greeted by an ancient elven spirit, whose existence seems to befuddle all at Skyhold as she pulls people from their dreams to her room in the Fade. Whether she's a threat remains to be seen.





	1. Awoken

**Author's Note:**

> So this isn't going to be beta'd at all since I just want to do this for my own fun rather than for a nice pretty, polished product. I might fuck up some lore since, again, I'm here to write for fun on this one rather than to be super accurate. Besides, fuck lore and canon, am I right?

His dreams, as terrible as they were, tended to be rather familiar. The gore-filled halls of the Circle, the tempts of demons whispering in his ear, and the ache of his muscles at he held on to his blade as tight as he could. This… this was not familiar, though the change was more than welcome.

The old stone halls of the Circle were now pristine slabs of marble and the usual desire demon’s temptations were replaced with a string of words Cullen could only recognize as elven, and they came from a woman dressed in gold.

“What?” he asked on reflex. Suddenly, his confusion was mirrored on her face. “Who are you?”

His words echoed in the chamber, which – now that he had the opening to take a look at it – held no doors or windows. The room was completely closed off with its only source of light being the fire from a fireplace, though the fire seemed to sustain itself without burning any wood. The room was sparsely furnished with a plush bed, filled bookshelf, a tall mirror, and small desk. On the desk was a filled pitcher of water and a silver platter with an assortment of food on it, but with little way in or out, Cullen was only left to wonder how any of it was even there.

In the light of the fire, everything had a warm tint to it, and the gold dress the elven woman wore seemed to glow. She sat on the bed, the smooth fabric of the dress cascading off the side of the bed, looking contemplative with her hand on her chin as she stared off into space. She opened her mouth and then closed it before she waved her hand at him, causing everything to fade away like smoke in darkness before his very eyes. When the last spec of the room faded into the nothingness, Cullen woke with a start.

The next night returned to his usual routine of nightmares, waking and falling asleep several times through the night. About a month later, he returned to that room. He crashed into the bed over his office, tired from the day and only half undressed. Falling asleep happened almost instantaneously and he returned to the warm room of the elven woman’s. The food on the desk was replaced with a completely different meal, but the rest remained the same.

“Who are _you?_ ” the woman asked. Well, mostly the same it seemed. She hadn’t seemed to comprehend him last time and only spoke in a language he couldn’t comprehend. Though she spoke the King’s tongue, it had a familiar accent he had heard some Dalish from the Free Marches speak in.

“Commander Cullen Rutherford of the Inquisition,” he answered, though with little reason why. This woman was obviously a demon, though he wasn’t sure who it was supposed to be to begin with. A desire demon would’ve taken the form of something he, well, desired. “And you?”

He watched as she pursed her lips and looked away back towards the fire. Thought it was just his dream, standing awkwardly didn’t fit too well with him so he took a seat at the desk, turning the chair so he could look straight at the nameless woman.

Finally, she said, “Rona of Lavellan.”

“Lavellan,” he said to test the word on his tongue. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“Is Inquisition supposed to mean something to _me?_ ”

“I suppose it depends on where you’re from,” Cullen replied. “Or even what you are.”

The woman, Rona, slid off her bed to stand but she didn’t move any closer to him, instead looking about her own room. She sighed.

“What is your world today?” she asked. It was as odd a question as any, but he didn’t seem this dream changing and nothing here felt nefarious so he didn’t have anything against answering her.

“We’re in the fifth age, that of the Dragon, the Orlesian Empire is controlled by Empress Celene Valmont, Queen Anora rules Ferelden, the Dalish-“

“Dalish?” 

“What? Do you know who the Dalish are?” Cullen asked. She shook her head. “Uh, they’re elves that refused to live in human cities and hold on to their tradition and history.”

Rona just looked at him like he was talking in a whole other language. He ran a hand through his hair and let a sigh escape his lips, unsure how to do any of this justice. 

“What kind of world do you remember?” he finally asked. Better to get a sense of what she knew in order to give her a better answer. It took a moment to get an answer from her, her mouth ajar and eyes once more wandering the room as she searcher for her own hard fought answer.

“I’m… having trouble remembering,” Rona confessed. She took a seat by the fireplace and leaned against the stone, turning to look at him. 

“Well, just tell me what you remember,” he said, leaning back in the chair and moving his leg to rest on top of the other. Rona smiled at that with a distant look, to which Cullen could only take it as she was recalling something favorable.

“The library,” she said almost dreamily, her hands absently fiddling with the long braid her warm brown hair was tied in. “I’d spent all ages there. I’d help the spirits document what the saw. There were archives of memories as far as the eye could see. I could spend all my time there, trying to write events through the memories of them.”

Her words left Cullen with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. Spirits. People these days or even in years, decades, centuries past didn’t talk about spirits in that view or interacting with them in that way, except perhaps Solas. 

“Do you have any idea of where you are now?” he asked. She shook her head once more.

“Little to no idea. Near Arthalan, I believe. I just recently woke a moon or two ago, but I remembered falling asleep elsewhere. The library...?” she pondered aloud, her fingertips gently resting against her lips. 

That cold feeling in his stomach settled only slightly. Arlathan. He’d have to talk it over with Solas, but he had little doubt this woman was anything but someone – or something – from the days of ancient elves. Obviously this was the Fade, a realm of dreams, but she seemed far too real. No, not the kind of real that his dreams felt like, where he believed he was still in his own world. Here he was aware of the kind of setting this was and the strangeness of it all, but was _she_ aware of it?

“Isn’t it strange that there’s no doors?” he pointed out, hoping she might be able to realize something and bring him up to speed. Honestly, all of this was confusing beyond belief, but he was pretty sure he was still sleeping and it’d probably be the only restful night of sleep he’d get. Rona had done nothing thus far to tempt him of anything, so he was in no real rush to leave anyways. 

“My eluvian has seemed to go dark,” she said, sounding less fearful of being trapped and more disappointed. “But whoever set me up in here made sure I’d be comfortable. I’m sure they’ll come to get me soon.”

Cullen bit at his bottom lip, wondering if it’d be safe to inform her that Arlathan was no more, that whoever put her here, in the Fade, was probably long gone. Against his better judgement, that’s exactly what he told her, but he didn’t get to experience her reaction. As soon as the words left his mouth, she waved her hand like before and he returned to his bed.

 ---

Cullen made it a point to visit Solas the next day, giving up the time he’d spend eating to head to the rotunda and detail his night to the elf. Apparently, Cullen’s nights weren’t the only ones this elven woman has been visiting. 

“Oh yes, Rona,” Solas said as he flipped through his research papers, seemingly uninterested in the conversation. “She seems to have been hopping around in everyone’s dreams lately. Sera came here a week ago and blamed me for giving her strange dreams, even.”

“What is she?” Cullen asked. He had his hands planted on the table as he towered over the sitting elf. “A spirit?”

“I believe that’s what she is. It’s not uncommon to find confused spirits of those who haven’t moved on yet. The location she brings people to is strange, I’ll admit, but there’s little else of what she could be, Commander.”

Cullen nodded in agreement though he had his doubts. The Inquisitor had survived the Fade, but even if this woman was there physically, how could she have survived? How could she have slept all that time? Yes, there were stories that the ancient elves were immortal, but none of the elves today had that power anymore. She said she had recently woken so she hadn’t been awake this entire time, but then what woke her? That, he asked Solas.

“Our arrival at Skyhold could have woken any spirits that used to reside here,” Solas offered as an answer. “You said she said two moons? We did arrive here around two moons ago.”

“Of course,” Cullen conceded. “Thank you for your time.”

Left with a few more questions than answers, he returned to his office intent on forgetting the strange woman from his dreams. She, apparently, had other plans.

A golden glow at his desk could’ve been mistaken as rays of light had the curves of the light not matched last night’s memory of Rona. Here, she matched Solas’s theory of being a spirit. Her image wasn’t a solid glow, instead the golden light strategically highlighting parts of her to bring her shape to life while the most of the area she occupied, he could see right through her as clear as day.

“Commander Cullen Rutherford of the Inquisition,” she greeted him, walking from his bookcase, through his desk to close the distance between them. Her words echoed, sounding just as she had in her marble room where her voice reverberated off the stone. 

Cullen had to restrain his first instinct to expel her from the room, his Templar training and experiences still as influential on him as ever.

“Could you always do that?” he said, forcing a calmness to his words, pretending he wasn’t about to have a casual conversation with a spirit.

“This? I… I’m not sure. I tried to sleep and found myself here instead.”

“Have you not slept since you woke?” Cullen found himself asking.

“Only a little. After I woke- well, after I first encountered you, I spent most of my time with the people who visited me and trying to learn your language,” Rona told him. Her proficiency in speaking this language, he realized, as a mastery after a month. Perhaps spirits with her kind of awareness learned faster. 

“You know, we have an expert on spirits here if you want to talk with him. He’s actually an elf too-“ he began, but was caught off guard by the fear that flashed across her face. “Is something wrong?”

She frowned and pointed a finger in the direction of the rotunda. “That man?”

Cullen nodded.

“Do not trust him.”


	2. Likely Tales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen isn't the only one trying to make sense of this situation. Rona searches for answers of her own.

Cullen felt out of his mind and knew only one person who had once felt the same: Leliana. Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to get her attention. Sometimes grabbing her attention was as simple as asking her to stay in the war room when the Inquisitor and Josephine left or it was as indirect as telling one of his men that he planned to visit her, after which he’d receive a raven from her with a time on when to visit – which was rather considerate as both their time was precious. 

“It’s probably not surprising to you that I’m rather suspicious of a spirit that tells me to stop trusting the people around me,” Cullen told her as he leaned back in the sturdy tavern chair. They sat at a table on the third floor of Skyhold’s tavern, a quiet and secluded place to meet with the exception of Cole in his usual corner with a bundle of flowers. For the things that Cole did, that was pretty normal.

“As you should be,” Leliana replied, taking a sip of her ale. “Actually, I’ve had her appear in my dreams as well.”

Cullen couldn’t help but laugh at a passing thought of Leliana’s seeming omnipresence keeping her to a sleep schedule of a cat. 

“Same setting I described?” he asked. She nodded. “Did you discuss anything?”

“Not anything too important. I’d attempt to steer the conversation to who she was. I even offered to investigate anything she needed, but any time I did that she acted as if she hadn’t heard me and continued on. I’ve only had her twice but both times she’d show me things in her books.” Leliana set the mug down on the table. “They were images but… not quite like pictures. She’d ask me to describe them in my own words.”

“Memories,” Cullen remembered. “She told me she would record history using the memories of spirits. Perhaps that’s what you saw?”

“Perhaps. Regardless, I indulged her. A few of my scouts have had her in their dreams and they don’t seem to be… well, negatively affected by the encounters. If she’s a spirit, she’s a rather unusual one.”

“Like Cole, do you suppose? Do you think he’d have any insight?”

“I doubt it,” Leliana said as she brushed aside a few stray hairs, her eyes flickering to the boy and Cullen followed her gaze. Cole sat with his flowers, braiding them into crowns, one of which sitting over the top of his hat. “He has little enough understanding of what _he_ is.”

Cullen braided his fingers together and held them in front of his mouth, his brows furrowing as he tried to find an answer to this confounding situation. 

“A month ago, she couldn’t even comprehend me and the other night she was speaking as fluently as you and I. She might’ve been trying to learn the King’s tongue,” he said, and Leliana agreed. “When you were with the Warden, did you ever encounter a spirit like this?”

Leliana pursed her lips. “Mara found an elven spirit trapped in some ruins and helped it move on in exchange for her training as an Arcane Warrior. Probably the most unusual spirit we met was the one at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, but… I’m unsure either of those cases are related to our spirit problem here.”

“You’d consider this elven spirit as a problem?” Cullen asked, curious as to why. Leliana always seemed to know something that no one else had a clue to. Even her insight into problems was thought of with a unique approach, most likely due to all her experience during the Blight and then working for the Divine. 

“I’d consider her a possible threat,” she answered. “If she indeed just ‘woke up’, then it’s likely her nature could change with all these new people around her with their own intense emotions. I don’t know how likely corruption would be, but I’m just considering all possibilities here. The last thing I want to do is overlook a threat.”

He nodded. That was understandable, considering that it was her job. 

“Let me know if you learn anything else.”

“Taken a special interest in this?” Leliana teased, wearing a catlike grin.

Cullen pursed his lips, his hand moving up to rest on his chin. The interest he had taken in this was little more than mere curiosity. After all, it was a strange situation that even Solas didn’t seem to know what to make of it, and nothing in Cullen’s Templar training had ever covered such a situation. If he was being honest, the change in scenery with his dreams was welcome, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that letting his guard down might turn out to be disastrous. Considering that Leliana had seen him at the Ferelden Circle at one of his lowest points, he could imagine her answer quite clearly if he voiced his concerns aloud. 

“I’m also vested in the safety of our people here,” he fibbed. She looked at him knowingly but didn’t press the topic. 

“Thanks for the break,” she said as she stood up at the table. When she reached to pull her hood back up, the cloth snagged on the flower crown on her head. She just smiled and left it there, leaving their place at the tavern with her hood uncharacteristically down. 

Cullen raised a hand to his own head and tested his hair for any new additions, thankful that Cole hadn’t gifted him with a flower crown. The guards would have a field day with seeing their Commander walking around donned with flowers and Cullen didn’t think he’d have it in him to reject the gift from the strange boy either.

Back in his office, the golden glow of Rona had returned. Again, he found her standing in front of his bookcases, and when he rounded around the room to see the features of her face, he could only guess the frustration on her face was from being unable to grab his books. 

“I’ve discussed this… ‘Veil’ at lengths with a mage here,” the spirit said as she turned to face him. 

“Dorian?” he asked. Considering her views on Solas and Vivienne’s views on spirits, Dorian seemed the logical choice.

“The Tevinter boy? No. They were… Dalish.”

“Ah.” Cullen turned from the bookcase and took a seat at his desk. His thoughts had turned to the experts the Inquisitor had at her disposal, but there were plenty more mages within Skyhold’s walls – a fact he was more than well aware of. “Did you learn something?”

“I was told tales. The Dread Wolf tricking the… gods into the Fade and trapping them by creating the Veil.” The frustration on her face didn’t ease. In fact, it might have even grown stronger. “Some of it sounded familiar, but I just can’t...”

“Do you have any clue why your memory seems to be failing you?” he asked. In the back of his mind, he figured the truth resided somewhere around the fact that the longer a spirit remained, the more they lost themselves, but he was in no rush to tell that to her lest the stress of it result in something unpleasant. 

“I… no, but I plan find out,” Rona promised. Cullen watched as her form faded until all that remained in his view was the stuffed bookcase. Her appearance, and disappearance, were timely as the moment she left, a few of the hold’s soldiers entered with the midday reports. 

\---

The familiarity of her own room irked her in a way she couldn’t quite describe with words, elven or this new modern tongue. She knew the feeling stemmed from the gaps in her memory, the ability to find the room both warming like returning to her childhood home but chilling as well to the parts that she had no recollection of. The books on her bookcase she recognized as her own work, but the contents in which she couldn’t remember being a part of. She could remember working in a grand library but she couldn’t remember any specific memories of _being_ there.

The food that appeared in her room was comforting but lacked a kind of reality. From the time here, being awake, she had little physical needs. Consuming the food and drink provided felt more like reliving a memory than actually taking it into herself. Still, her body often called on her to sleep, though she could stave off the feeling or sleep in short bursts, not that she had too much to do while awake other than to reread her books and talk with her visitors. 

The visitors came on their own for the most part. She couldn’t devise a pattern to it, the people and the times they came being as random as it could be. That man, the Commander Cullen, was the first one she had intentionally brought to her room. How she did that remains to be seen, but the fact remains that it’s an ability somewhat under her own control.

Several of her books laid across her bed, half of them sitting on the edges of her dress. When she stretched, laying back down on the bed, she knocked several books off the edge. The expectation for the book to make a noise as it hit the ground did not become a reality. She waited and then waited a moment longer for the sound before leaning over the edge in search for an explanation. Apparently, it was a simple one: they simply never hit the ground.

“Reality in the Fade is easy to manipulate with a strong will,” Rona heard a man comment. The search for the source wasn’t a hard one considering the size of the room. She looked towards the darkened eluvian to see an elven man standing before it. His appearance wasn’t that she visually recognized but something about the way he influenced the room or the way he held himself was familiar. 

“Solas,” she said, unable to keep the distaste from her mouth. This man frustrated her in the same way her room did, with the inability to put a real memory to something that she _knew_ she knew. 

“I came to see how you’ve fared,” he said. Unlike many of the others that visited her room, his eyes didn’t wander, instead staying focused on her. “You’re well, I hope.”

“You _came_ here,” Rona noticed. 

“And you haven’t been drawing people in,” he noticed in kind. “I was curious about that.”

“How did you get here? Intentionally, I mean,” she asked. He pivoted, turning to look at the tall mirror that stood behind him. “You can’t have come in that way. It doesn’t work.”

“My statement earlier about willpower remains relevant,” Solas said. His words somehow found a way to unsettle her, setting her on the edge. “If you attempt to leave through the eluvian, I would recommend caution. The Fade is as dangerous as you make it, if you remember.”

Unimpressed with his warnings, Rona waved her hand before him. Her fingertips tingled with the magic needed to send him away but his form remained. That earned a faint grin from the elven man as a response. Whether or not the fact he remained was intentional on his part, the fact that he disappeared a moment later felt more like a show of power. His disappearance left her staring at the inactive eluvian as the sound of books hitting the ground finally reached her ears.

Regardless of his warning, Rona knew she only had two options: remain in the room for however long the room would sustain her or leave. Considering that her only visitors were dreamers and that her dreams took her to the waking world, fixing the inactive mirror was her next and only step to leave this room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how long this fic is going to be. If you're interested in keeping up with any progress I post on this or my other fics, follow me at officialredjenny @ tumblr! I'm always interested in talking about my fics or hearing people's theories! 
> 
> Also if you could comment on my chapters, it would honestly mean the world to me. I write original fiction on my own and mainly do fanfiction to get connected with people and receive comments about my writing style or even just for encouragement! Thank you so much for reading~


	3. Golden Ghosts, Golden Flames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trying to solve one mystery at a time only works when you have enough time to spare.

Inquisitor Carmilla Trevelyan apparently thought this entire situation was funny as funny could be. She held a laugh behind tightly sealed lips with the added protection of her hands – yes, both of them – covering her mouth. Even though he couldn’t see the smile she wore, the creases at her eyes betrayed even the attempt to look like she didn’t find this predicament entertaining.

“You mean to tell us; we’re concerned about our Commander having dreams about elven ladies?” Carmilla said along with a loud bark of a laugh. 

“No, darling, the problem is that many people have had the same woman in their dreams,” Josephine clarified for her beloved. With a sigh, she added, “Myself included. The dreams themselves aren’t tiring, but I do find myself concerned throughout the day. Leliana, you said you approached Solas on this subject. Does he have any findings yet?”

“I’ve asked him to direct his time and effort towards this situation,” Leliana told the group. “He promised his best efforts but warned me that it was possible that there’d be little information to find on this subject.”

“Not something we’re not accustomed to in the Inquisition,” Cullen said, the last of his words hiding under a soft breath. 

“Is it posing a problem?” Carmilla asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of demons, but… it’s just a spirit right? Like Cole?”

“I’ve asked the same,” Cullen said, looking to Leliana.

“In the sense that Cole’s an outlier, this spirit Rona can be counted as the same,” Leliana conceded. Cullen looked back to the Inquisitor to avoid the daggers Leliana was staring at him. “But as for being of the origin, I doubt it.”

“Cole helped me back with the Envy demon. I don’t mean we should stop trying to learn what this spirit is, but does it really have to be such a big concern here?” Carmilla asked.

“Dear, keep in mind our guests. Try explaining it to the nobles who come to visit and learn we let a spirit run loose in people’s dreams while we house Templars and mages alike in the same walls?” Josephine pointed out. Carmilla crossed her arms over her chest and sighed.

“Fine. Consider my permission given for any resources needed to aide in this… investigation?” Carmilla decided. Cullen had found it rather entertaining to watch their dear leader. Of course, neither himself nor the other advisers take the role of Inquisitor, but Carmilla Trevelyan’s reluctance and inexperience to her new role was evident often. By how often she sided with her beau Josephine, Cullen found it likely that the young woman did it in part for Josephine’s approval as well as feeling like she could trust their charismatic diplomat. 

The Inquisitor concluded that war room session, waiting until both she and Josephine were out the doors of the room before reaching to hold the diplomat’s hand. Cullen stayed, his eyes trained on the map before him and carefully memorizing the dispersant of troops they had decided on, as well as the movement of Leliana’s scouts and Josephine’s people. Though their suggestions wouldn’t have been his first choice, he couldn’t deny the results.

“Commander? Are you coming?” Leliana asked as she made her way to the door, her hand dragging along the top of the table as she moved.

“Hm?” Cullen looked up. When her words finally caught up in his head, he shook his head. “Give me another moment.”

Leliana nodded and left, leaving him alone in the war room. Or rather, mostly alone. It was a strange tingle in the back of his head that gave her away, a strange sense of just _knowing_ as the spirit entered into his reality behind him. 

“I would’ve pictured a war room… different,” Rona said. Her spectral appearance entered his view. Her hand reached out towards the wooden table to drag her fingertips in the same way Leliana had. The moment the tips of her fingers dipped into the surface, she snatched them back and held them over her chest, with one hand clutching the other.

“More warlike?” he offered. The fact that he treated this entire situation so casually unnerved him, but his mind was focused on the map. “War is conducted with more than swords.”

“Magic?” the elven spirit added. Cullen couldn’t help but give a light laugh.

“People. Public opinion can win a war as much as a trebuchet could.” He ran a gloved hand through the curls of his hair. “I only excel in the strong arm aspect of war, so I couldn’t tell you much about the other sides of war.”

He looked from the map to the woman as she leaned over the table to look at the map. After a moment, she pointed to Skyhold.

“This is where we are?” Rona asked. Cullen nodded in response. In the back of his mind, he wondered had his experience with Cole calmed him around spirits. The boy still disturbed him on a smaller level, but his first response these days was not to reach for his sword. She continued to stand still, holding a hand to her mouth as her eyes stayed fixated at the map. “This is not where I remember being last.”

“Any idea why you’d be here?” he asked. If she was supposed to be a spirit of an ancient elf, most spirits of the deceased tended to stay near where they passed if they didn’t move on. He watched as her face once more displayed frustration over her memories – or the apparent lack of them. 

“This place has powerful magic in it,” she said. “Even through this form, I can sense that. The magic here could’ve drawn my form here. If not, the Fade doesn’t fit to the world like two maps paired on top of each other. It’s entirely possible a few steps away from where I last remembered or that the magic here creates a kind of fold in the distance…”

“Or it’s possible something happened you can’t remember,” Cullen reminded the spirit. She didn’t look to him, but her profile gave away that she had already considered that possibility. Perhaps she didn’t want to delve too far into the idea that there could be another player in her history.

“Your spymaster, she offered me her services. If you could spare the time, please ask her to look into the people of Lavellan,” Rona told him, finally looking directly his way. He watched her as she straightened herself, standing slightly taller, though her frame didn’t bring her much taller than his own shoulders. “And… I thank you for your hospitality.”

“My hospitality? Do you mean the Inquisition’s?” he asked. She shook her head.

“Yours. Men with bodies of brawn have talked to me of you. I apologize for appearing to you more often than others,” she told him, her hands absently fiddling with her own fingers. It was easy to miss, but he believed he could make out the small motion of her biting at her bottom lip. “I’m finding it hard to believe this world has such a poor view of magic, but neither do I wish to belittle your experiences with it.”

“That’s… considerate,” he said, finding it hard to summer any other emotion to his voice than skepticism. She didn’t say anything, perhaps waiting for him to add something more, but after a moment longer, she continued.

“You were the first person I saw after waking and waiting, and, so far you, have been the one of the most receptive I’ve encountered,” she explained further. Her hands stopped toying with each other and started to tug at the hair in her braid that had draped itself over her shoulder. “That’s not saying others haven’t tried to be helpful, but… I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I apologize.”

“I think I know what you mean.” He felt a pang center in his chest and stomach at the realization. Whatever she was, whoever she was, the fact remained that she had been dropped into an unfamiliar situation with no one there for her. It was a feeling he knew too well from being dropped in Kirkwall. True, that had been partially his choice, but the feelings that followed that choice were not of his own volition. “I will let Leliana know.”

“Thank you.” The golden light that was her lips turned up into a smile, the warmth of which matching her own hue, though it was hard to catch as her form started to fade away. “If my people have survived, they might know what happened to…”

And she was gone. Though the way she left her own thought hanging peaked Cullen’s curiosity, he had his own duties to attend to before he started to devote even more of his mental processes towards the abnormalities of this spirit.

\---

“I put people to investigate her as soon as I was able to,” Leliana said. In the rookery, the squawks of the ravens clawed at his ears and irritated the headache he usually carried with him. She, however, seemed not to be phased by it, a testament to will as Cullen saw it. She just sat at the table and continued her work, scrawling away with her quill on parchment, as she talked. “A Dalish clan goes by that name. Whether they’re connected with this Rona remains to be seen, but I asked one of my scouts to make a detour to the clan on her way back from her mission in the Free Marches.”

“What do you know about this clan at the moment?” Cullen asked, finding himself intrigued. A spirit claiming to be a part of something long past was nothing new; having a living embodiment of a claim from the past was something else entirely. But he soon found his curiosity dissipating. The Dalish meant to reclaim any bit of their past that they could. It was rather possible that they simply claimed a historic name for the name of their clan.

“Not much at the moment, I’m afraid. The few Dalish elves I have in my employ have little information on the clan other chance encounters between hunters.” Leliana paused in her writing and set her quill in the inkwell closest to her. “The only thing of note I’ve been told is that they tend to view the elven goddess Ghilan’nain as their clan’s patron.”

“Does that mean something?” His education might’ve been extensive, but the Chantry didn’t encourage the study of other religions from their Templars. 

“I’m not sure yet, but I do find it strange. In their lore, Ghilan’nain is the mother of the halla, those silver deer the Dalish roam with. My Dalish scouts find it odd as well. Not many clans take a patron. Individuals, yes, but not an entire clan and much less a goddess that doesn’t play a key part in their religion. I was told that the few clans that do take a patron will chose one such as Mythal, goddess of motherhood and justice, or Andruil, the goddess of the hunt.” Leliana chewed at the insides of her cheeks. “I’m not sure what to make of it, but I haven’t had the chance to take it to Solas yet.”

Cullen’s first thought was to offer to take it to him, especially considering as the way back to his office would pass through the rotunda where Solas could more often be found than not. The second thought was that little voice in the back of his head reminding him that he didn’t have any stake in this… _spirit._ Instead, he said, “Thank you for your time.”

“Commander,” she pardoned, giving him a nod of her head as he left.

Cullen avoided eye contract with Solas as he headed back to his office, to which the elf didn’t seem to have much of a problem with and continued on with his own studies. A tinge of guilt tempted him to retrace his footsteps and discuss the Lavellan clan with him, but as he neared his office, the tower where he spent most of his nights in a restless, fitful sleep caused by memories of demons, that guilt was easy to push aside. 

\---

“…to me,” Rona finished, hearing her voice muted through the plush pillows that her head sunk into and partially hid her pointed ears. She sat up, feeling tired and drained in a way she didn’t remember having felt in this room. Barely a moment past and the confusion of returning hit her. She hadn’t meant to return to the room yet. 

The shadows she was used to watching flickering on the walls lacked in their usual intensity. Her eyes panned over towards the sourceless fire only to find the bright flames dimmed. As long as she spent time in this room, they hadn’t changes in any aspect. Rona got up off the bed, knocking off another book she had forgotten she had fell asleep with. She picked it up and held it tightly against her chest as she took a seat in front of the flames, watching the wisps flicker back and forth.

An idea sparked in the back of her mind, the kind of wordless idea akin to a tune you couldn’t quite remember. The tip of her pointed finger itched, to which she tried to scratch at it with the nail of her thumb. As she tried to sate the itch, the feeling grew until it felt like a spark. She whipped her hand, trying to shake the feeling, but that spark only gained in intensity before it felt like it was exposed to a direct flame.

It was a stupid thought that came to her next, but one she didn’t ignore. A coincidence here, trapped in a room in the Fade, seemed unlikely. With her hand, he reached out slowly and tentatively towards the fire. Where she thought the burning feeling would extend, instead it snuffed itself out, making the fire feel as welcome as a warm wind in Winter. To test it further, she pushed her hand further into the flame with no change in how the light felt on her skin.

The flame steadied in its vibrancy but refused to stay still, surprising her as it the licks of fire climbed up her arm and wrapped around her chest, settling all over her until she could feel the magic sink in. The magic she used in the room had been limited to pushing people out and felt only like a tingle on her skin. She could feel the power returning to her like an old friend, warming her from the inside, making her feel more _real_ somehow. This magic was hers. Which meant… this room had been of her own creation.

As the last of her magic returned to her, the room first began to darken; then, in began to fade away. Only the eluvian remained opaque, save for the dark screen that began to shine. Rona tried to reach for the books in her shelves, on her bed, but her hand fell through all but the one she already held in her arms. 

Not waiting to find out what was to happen the moment the room faded from existence, she ran head first through the mirror and straight into the Fade.


	4. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Physically surviving in the Fade isn't easy.

The moment the last of her passed through the mirror, the sharp sound of cracking sounded behind her. Shattered pieces of the eluvian fell around her, with some of them even making it to the ground before herself and cutting her as she landed on them. The tension in her muscles became painful as she held on to her book as tight as she could in fear of losing it. She rolled to a stop just inches away from the ledge of the landmass she laid on. It took strength and courage to peek open her eyes to the new reality before her: floating landmasses all around in a place that was filled to the brim with unease and a dangerous newness. 

The landmass she laid on was like an island, removed from the rest of its counterparts. Save for the now broken eluvian and a dim hanging lantern, it was empty. She could feel as dangerous emotions tried to sneak up on her, and she took Solas’s warning to heart and tried to calm herself before doing anything else. A few deep breaths and positive thoughts later, she reopened her eyes and pushed herself up. 

Looking out at the Fade, despite her best efforts, was anxiety inducing. She wished she had any memory of her past. From what she had been told by the people of the Inquisition, she should have an extensive amount of information on how to navigate this place. Even considering that all she remembered was working in a library in the Fade, she felt like she should know something more than she already did. 

Rona pinched at the skin between her brows, sighed, and stood up. Figuring that her room was an outlier in this place, the need for food and water would be a necessity again. Well, if it wasn’t, she figured it best to plan for the worst. Better to seek out those things now than to not and find out she in fact did need them.

The Fade, however, did had something in common with her room: no sense of time. The green skies didn’t change as she waited on the island mass, nor did it feel like a great amount of time passed as she waited on a moving mass to pass by for her to jump to it. The only thing that did change was how much longer she thought she was going to last. Her tongue grew more dry, her stomach began to complain, and her movements became more sluggish and tired. 

“My, my,” Rona heard from behind her as she wandered the mountainous realm of the Fade. She turned to see a spirit that… looked like a melting man. Sloth, she knew intuitively. “Are you tired? Lost?”

“By a singular definition of lost,” Rona carefully replied. “I have no real destination.”

“Meaning lost… has no meaning,” it finished for her. Slowly, it grew closer to her. The sloth spirit had no face, looking like a melting shadow in human form. “I might be able to… help.”

“No help it required,” she said, trying to stay strong despite the complaints from her body. Consciously, she tried to remain positive and energized. “I will not turn it down, but neither will I ask or bargain for it.”

Rona swore that, had it a face, it was smiling right there. It didn’t reply to her, not vocally, but it lifted one of its arms and pointed out towards the direction she had already been heading.

“That way is safe… free of obstacles, but I do not believe it will help you.” It shifted the direction it was pointing towards the right. In the distance, she saw stormy clouds forming and the scattering of corrupted spirits. “That way is dangerous, but should be what you need.”

Rona bit at her bottom lip. This was clearly a sloth spirit. Though it wasn’t inherently dangerous, believing it at face value could prove just as harmful. Still, she had no direction to move in and no other goal than to find her way out; it’d be the dangerous path she’d take.

\---

It's a sudden intruder in his dream that brings reality to him. Suddenly, his Templar armor didn’t weigh down his tired body, his limbs didn’t ache from the tight grip on his sword, and his stomach didn’t ache with the intensity of being stabbed. The desire demon before his barrier turned to face the intruder, claws raised and a ball of energy summoned to throw at the intruder. He found himself only able to watch as the they rolled across the ground to avoid the attack before casting a weak fire spell of her own. Though it hit the demon, it barely phased by the attack. 

Reinvigorated, Cullen gathered the courage to let the barrier go and swung his sword into the back of the demon. It twisted and screamed before falling to a pile of ashes. The conscious dream started to shift; the nightmarish tower lost the smell of decomposition and the mess that covered the floor started to fade away. Though the dream remains situated in the Kinloch tower, it turned from a nightmare to a gentle memory of a slow and kind day in the tower. Mages appear, doing their chores and studies and seemingly unaware of the intruder and himself.

It was a gift to have this kind of awareness in a dream, to know where he stood. The only other time he could clearly remember that being was… in the elven woman’s room.

“Rona?” he tested. The intruder laid still on the ground, hunched over. Tangled hair covered her face, but when she looked up his suspicions were confirmed. “How…”

“Water,” she croaked. 

“What?”

“Your dream,” she said, her voice hoarse and scratchy. “You can control it.”

He didn’t reply to tell her. This entire situation was new and, frankly, rather strange. He had heard no tales of people controlling their dreams from the Templars. In fact, the only person he knew that could perform such a feat was Solas, a mage who specialized in the Fade. Even though he had no idea if it would work at all, Cullen gave it a shot. He closed his eyes and imagined a pitcher of water and a glass in front of the elven woman, and when he opened his eyes, there it was.

He watched as she struggled to steady herself as she hastily drank the water. Once that was done, she asked him for food, her voice a little clearer and her sentences longer. Again, he obliged and waited as she ate. Testing out his new awareness, he closed his eyes once more and forced the dream to shift to the docks he knew as a boy and for the Templar armor to change into the armor was more accustomed to wearing these days. He sat at her side, letting his legs hang off the side of the docks. 

“Can you explain what just happened?” he asked, only to then notice _her_. Now that he wasn’t preoccupied with the strangeness of the situation, he noticed the cuts and bruises all over her arms and legs, the dirt that covered her legs and feet, and her previously impeccable dress torn to shreds. “What happened to _you_?”

She ran a hand through her hair, tossing it over her shoulder to reveal an expression Cullen was used to seeing on men who returned from battle, men who had marched for hours upon hours to return home to safety. 

“I’m not entirely sure on this… this is all so strange to me as well,” Rona started. The bags under her eyes looked fearsome. “I’ve fallen into others’ dreams, never for long, however. Most have pushed me out like a foreign invader in their body. I’ve come to understand my body is flesh and blood, Cullen. The spirits- the demons, they attack and I hurt.”

Cullen wanted to listen patiently and carefully, but none of it made sense. “But how is this happening?”

Her stare was as sharp as daggers. “There are mages yet among your people who can walk in the Fade as they sleep. They can affect others’ dreams. If I’m really, physically in the Fade, I believe my stumbling into others’ dreams can… wake them up, make them aware. Some have shown remarkable will to change their dreams.”

She looked out at the changed landscape of the dream, seeming to carefully study it. He could understand what she was trying to insinuate but let the topic slide. 

“Most have used that wakefulness and will to push me out, done out of instinct.” She shook her head. “Time is increasingly difficult to tell. How long has it been since we last spoke?”

“A week?” he offered. Rona looked down at her lap, carrying a pensive look on her face. He could practically see the cogs in her mind turning to make sense of the situation. In fact, the same sense went through his own mind. “I’ve heard a man or two report an odd dream, but Leliana and Solas dismissed it, since as it wasn’t in your room.”

“I see,” she replied. If any of this was true, Cullen could understand trying to process it all, to figure it out. He, himself, might not have been one hundred percent on board just yet and still holding on to his suspicions, but as much as he knew was mind boggling already, much less trying to live in it.

“So… I’m still sleeping, correct? How much time do we have until I wake up?” he asked, and she offered a polite smile.

“I wish I had all the answers, but I’m afraid I simply don’t know. We might have what will feel like many hours or many minutes, or perhaps someone or something will wake you and end your sleep early. I suppose you could keep the dream to yourself by forcing me out, but I’m not entirely sure if it’ll resume once I’m gone.”

“No, stay,” Cullen said without any hesitation. A night of restful sleep was too good to pass up. “Stay. We can talk.”

She smiled, the kind of smile that reached her eyes. It was the first one he’d seen on her. “I’d love to.”

 

\---

“We just… talked!” Cullen stated for what felt like the umpteenth time. Josephine giggled behind her clipboard, her eyes giving away her smile. “I had enough training on magic to theorize about her situation with her but not enough to come to a real conclusion, and she eventually fell asleep.”

“Rona Lavellan actually having physical needs is rather concerning,” Solas piped in. “Though there are spirits tricky enough to go this far, I’ve not encountered one willing to create such an elaborate deception without asking for something in turn yet. If this truly is someone stuck, physically, in the Fade, it makes the matter much more dangerous than a spirit trying to worm its way into the waking world.”

“Hey, I fell out of the Fade, and I think that I’m not that concerning,” Carmilla said, right before a yawn fled her mouth. 

“You got sent into the Fade by something that blew up the temple. I think that’s concerning enough,” Leliana added. “But, Solas, what are your reasons?”

“I assumed that it was either a spirit masking as an elf of ancient times or one that took on a fallen elf’s identity. The Dalish have their lore of Fen’Harel tricking their gods into being locked away in the Fade-“

“Are you insinuating that our Rona is one of the Dalish goddesses?” Leliana asked, her brow raised curiously. Solas’s eyes widened at her question, but he quickly settled himself.

“Of course not. What I’m saying is that we should be careful. All legends have a kernel of truth to them, and I’m simply advising not to underestimate anyone or anything that wants to leave the Fade,” he further explained. His mouth opened as if he were to add something more but no sounds came out. Cullen followed the elf’s line of sight to the Inquisitor, seeing Carmilla holding up her hand to gather their attention.

“We know that the artifact in Corypheus’s possession is elven. From the reports I’ve gotten, it doesn’t seem like she remembers much if she’s really some… ancient elf or whatever, but I think having her on our side will be good regardless. She’s a mage and, hey, if we can get more information on _surviving_ being physically in the Fade, I say we go for it. If we don’t either she dies in the Fade or our enemy learns of her and helps her out,” Carmilla told the group. “Commander, if she visits you again, tell her we’re willing to help. Leliana, I want you to put some of our mages on researching… anything to do with this situation, really.”

“Yes, Inquisitor,” both Cullen and Leliana said, though hardly in sync. 

Cullen’s eyes flickered to Solas, expecting to see the elf’s face marked with frustration only to find that the man seemed neutral to the Inquisitor’s decision. Solas nodded and bowed before he left, speaking no further warnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long wait. I've been super busy with school and everything else. I just started a new job as well. Even though I might take a little while longer to churn out chapters, I'm not going to stop writing for it.


	5. Fortress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time has passed, and Rona's getting slightly better at traveling physically through the Fade. After all, what else does she have to do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's probably a lot of mistakes and problems in this. I haven't really played the game in forever and, like I've said before, I'm just writing this for fun. Sorry about it having been so long. I started an editing job and am taking a full load at college so I've been just a tad busy.

Cullen had, somehow, fallen into a routine of entertaining and aiding the mystic elf in his sleep. Most nights, she’d drop in and help him control his dream where he would then summon water and food for her. Sometimes, she’d just sleep, looking more tired and ragged than her last visit. Other times, if she had slept in a safe place or in someone else’s dream, they would talk and explore how far his will could take them. 

“Think you could summon a new outfit for myself?” Rona asked. Once again, they were in the Circle, the stone walls bare of any of the horrors he once knew far too well. It was the Circle he saw wish fresh eyes, as a new Templar ready to serve; the only difference was most of the elven mages he had known in that Circle weren’t ancient elves from eons ago. Leliana had insisted he try to get Rona to talk more on the world she once knew, but she rarely answered and more often asked him about the current world. He didn’t push it.

Cullen closed his eyes and tried to imagine clothes. At first, he thought it a simple task but quickly remembered he rarely paid attention to what he wore, much less what others wore. His first attempt ended up in a copy of her current rags. 

“Keep your eyes closed,” she told him. “Imagine… mage armor. Imagine light armor, loose around the joints and fit to run in, but armored enough to protect.”

His second attempt resulted in Circle mage robes, too short and too curved for Rona – to his embarrassment, he realized he had been thinking of Mara Surana’s apprentice robes. Quickly, he willed those away and tried again. Like they say, third time’s a charm. Out came a robe around the chest, but loose around the arms. It came down like a dress, but the sides were split. Over it was a light metal chest plate as well as a bit of armor for her shoulders and arms. As a side thought, he added boots and gloves.

Finally, he opened his eyes to see the elf smiling. “Thank you,” she said. He watched as she gathered the materials into her arms before giving him a quick look which he took as a signal to turn away, only to turn back when she said she was finished. 

“Looks, uh, good,” Cullen said. He hadn’t pictured a color when he thought of the armor, but the fabric turned out to be a similar gold color to her ragged dress before it had been dirtied. The metal, however, a gleaming white that reflected the faint light in the dreamed Circle. “I might’ve turned you into a beacon, however.”

She shrugged and returned to her seat on the floor. 

“The Fade isn’t as calm as I thought it’d be. A… spirit warned me that only a strong will can manipulate the Fade as a whole. I’m only assuming that it’s reflecting your side of the Veil, turmoil begetting turmoil. Only a few spirits have been as kind as to help me, though never quite enough,” Rona said. She grabbed the discarded dress and began to tear it and tie the pieces together until it resulted in a makeshift bag that she placed her sole possession, a book, in and slung it over her shoulder.

“I could attempt to make you a bag,” he offered. 

“I’d prefer to hold onto this dress a while longer,” she said, fingering the material of the now-bag before looking at him with a smile – what was now a rare gift from her and he smiled in kind. “Thank you, though.”

Cullen stretched his arms wide and then leaned back on them. “I really must thank you for the restful sleep,” he started, figuring she’d appreciate the change in conversation away from herself. The further time had gone on, the more he had noticed her lack of comfort in questions about herself – a result from still not being able to remember anything, he could only guess. “The Inquisitor is taking us to Adamant soon and I’ve been up to my ears in work making sure we’ll be ready once we arrive. There will be many deaths, more than needed, if this doesn’t go right.”

“You’ve already begun the journey?” Rona asked, her confusion plain as day written on her face. He told her yes and she pondered on the answer. “I was wondering why the Fade seemed to be shifting more lately.”

He sat a little more forward. “Maybe our lack of presence at Skyhold changed the Fade?”

“No. I mean, I _know_ the Fade doesn’t fit the physical realm perfectly and it changes on its own accord quite often, but it’s just been… different. I wondered if I’ve accidentally tagged along.”

“In that case, in your travels in the Fade, why has it been that you’ve spiritually remained in Skyhold? I’ve heard no one from the forward camps reporting any dreams of you.”

“At this point, trying to apply order or reason to the Fade is a waste of time,” she decided, standing up and looking towards the exit of the Circle. She radiated a sense of determination through his dream, the mages in the background standing a little taller and the Templars relaxing slightly though none of them had ever paid any attention to her or himself in previous dreams, about as real as furniture. “I’m sorry to cut our time short, but I have a theory I wish to test.”

She started towards the door before she paused like a weed had caught her leg. “Right. Cullen, tell your spymaster that I’m no longer able to find any of the more dangerous spirits in my time out of dreams, I’ve seen less nightmares in people’s dreams, and there’s a cautious energy to most of the remaining spirits. Perhaps it’s just your travels, but for the time I’ve spent wandering this just feels too out of place to make sense.”

“Will do.”

And then she left Cullen to a shell of a dream.

\---

Though the Fade had grown no less dangerous, her understanding of it made it feel less so. Most of the things Rona had learned, her notes scrawled clumsily into a few empty pages in her book, felt familiar, and that familiarity became as annoying as a headache that wouldn’t rest. Summoning emotions, vague images but never strong enough to truly remember anything was both painful and frustrating beyond belief. 

After a few days – well, after what she considered days, sleeping more than a handful of hours equaling one day – she had attempted to keep a map of where she had been but quickly dismissed the project as places would look both familiar and completely different, paths changing, and landmarks shifting. The only things that stayed constant were darkened eluvians, a mockery of escape. 

“Help?” a spirit asked, interrupting Rona’s death stare match with the mirror. Turning to it, she could only guess the spirit was one of Generosity. Quickly, Rona tried to change her state of mind to something more pleasant. 

“Have you seen any others?” Rona asked before realizing how vague the question was. “Other spirits?”

Generosity shook its head. “Gone.”

“Any mirrors?” 

“Dark.”

Figured.

“Where have the spirits gone?” she asked, resuming her original point. “What way?”

The spirit remained silent and it took Rona a little longer than she’d care to admit before she realized where her problem laid.

“Can I help you find the others?” Rona asked, managing as genuine of a smile as she could for the spirit. It mirrored her smile and nodded, leading her away.

\---

Carmilla was as nervous as nervous could be, something that wasn’t too handy for battle. Her stomach had decided to turn itself into a frog, jumping about and croaking at anything it found remotely unpleasant. Which seemed to be anything and everything. Solas, Cassandra, and Vivienne were by her side through the thick and thin of the storming of Adamant, but she couldn’t gage how they felt through the fights as she could barely understand her own nerves.

“Tell Josephine she can have my stuff if I die,” the inquisitor half joked. “Or whatever Sera doesn’t steal for herself,” the inquisitor completely joked. She could practically hear Solas roll his eyes but she did hear Vivienne’s tutting. 

“You’re going to be alright, my dear. You have the right hand of the Divine, one of the best battle mages in Thedas and… Solas here to aid you,” Vivienne said, earning a half-real laugh from Milla as they chased a Corpy-face’s dragon through the ruins of Adamant. Up the stairs and… staring at the face of what’s his name fighting of what’s her name. Things happened too quickly to remember names.

Carmilla tried to stand tall and intimidating – a feat most difficult for someone who looked like a gangly teenager who just happened to be twenty-six years of age – as the Tevinter mage and Warden mage fought, the looming of the threat of the dragon never wavering from her mind as she knocked an arrow and aimed it towards the mages. Cassandra made a throaty noise and Carmilla reluctantly relaxed the string, though keeping the arrow in hand; she knew the risk involved with accidentally shooting the Warden mage. Instead, the team ran forward when… everything seemed to happen at once.

Her stomach-frog seemed content lapping up the anxiety and confusion as the dragon attacked and the Warden mage… did something. Milla’s focus hadn’t been on her but the newcomers, Hawke and the Warden Alistair having been close behind them, apparently. 

“Back!” she shouted a little too late, the stone floor collapsing right from under them and dragging her down. Suddenly, her stomach-frog quieted, Milla’s mind slowing down as her skin seemed to light up, her hand feeling like it was stuck into the white hot center of a blacksmith’s fire. She reached forward, the rushing air barely chilling her as she grappled with rift she opened herself. This felt different than ones in past battles; if previous Milla-made rifts felt like ripping fabric, this felt like dragging a dagger through a thick hide so hard that the result was nothing but a few shreds of leather left from the single stroke. 

She was pretty sure she blacked out from how she opened her eyes, seconds ago remembering the sight of falling towards a certain demise to the current show of an unfamiliar ground only a few feet from her face. The inquisitor heard familiar voices – some more familiar than others – right before she felt flat on her face, her grace as a rogue failing her from the sudden drop from suspension. 

“Everyone still have all their limbs?” she called to the rest of the group as she dusted herself off, the dust and dirt falling to the green tinted ground. Looking about, she realized they weren’t in Adamant anymore. “Maker’s balls.”

“Didn’t you hear us?” Solas asked, coming up from behind Milla that made her jump. The entire place welcomed back her dear old frog as well as making all her hair stand up on straight. “We’ve miraculously entered the Fade. Physically. Is it how you remembered?”

Solas stared at the Fade like a long lost lover, and Milla resisted the urge to make the kind of joke only Sera or Bull would say. Though she knew she should’ve remembered this place or the general feel of it at least, none of it stood out to her as particularly familiar, besides the overwhelming green hue. 

“We need to get out,” Milla said, holding out her hand briefly before it was smacked down by Solas. 

“We entered the Fade up there,” he said, pointing up to a portion of distorted air stories above them that settled into normalcy in the seconds she watched it. “We don’t know where we’ll reappear if you craft a rift here.”

“Perhaps the rift the Wardens made?” Vivienne suggested. Everyone seemed to agree. Carmilla sighed and closed her eyes, feeling out which way the still opened rift was.

“This way,” Milla said.

\---

It’s the loss of her guide the prompted Rona into a run. Well, the nightmares helped too. 

Behind her followed several vague elven shapes, men and women chasing her as featureless shadows. The occasional fire spell only managed to delay them from catching up to her, her legs tiring as the spirits grew faster and faster. Had this not been the umpteenth group of shadows she encountered, she might’ve had the energy to fight them off with real vigor, but all she could do now was narrowly avoid their attacks. 

With her last bit of magic, she threw up a wall of fire between her and the shadows. They stopped, unable to pass through and she took the moment to stop and breathe, her lungs straining for air. Unfortunately, her wall didn’t last as long as she thought it would and she took off running again only to hear the sound of arrows flying past and hitting their targets. Looking over her shoulder and seeing the wisps of shadow fading away, she saw a woman with short, dark hair and a bow held in her hands. The woman dipped into a bow.

“Inquisitor,” Rona said. The Inquisitor was the one person that was not hard to find within the Fade. Though spirits seemed wary of approaching the lightning-bright entrance of her dream, she had no trouble entering. The only problem was that the woman rarely seemed to sleep in long stretches, probably a symptom of her status. 

“We finally meet. In person, anyways,” Carmilla replied. Rona didn’t bother arguing there was little difference meeting in the Fade or physically considering that Rona could still physically interact with people’s dream selves. “How’d you find us?”

“You found me. I wasn’t looking for you… in fact, what are _you_ doing here?” Rona asked, eyeing the woman up and down. Aside from spirits and dreams, she was alone in the Fade. “Have you slipped from your dream...?” 

“Nah, fell in. Accident. My hand still feels like I slapped someone too hard, too many times.” For effect, Carmilla whipped her hand back and forth. From behind her ran a few others. A mage woman with a horned hat, a warrior woman she’d yet to encounter, another mage, a male warrior, and… Solas. She eyed him but he seemed intent on avoiding her gaze.

“Vivienne, Cassandra, Hawke, Alistair, this is the elven woman, Rona, we’ve been seeing in dreams,” Carmilla introduced, briefly turning to her companions. 

“So you’re really here in the Fade,” the mage, Vivienne, said with her hand on her chin, intrigued. “My theory was that you were like Solas, able to sleep and travel through the Fade.”

“Solas,” Cassandra said, “I’m surprised you aren’t falling over at her feet. She is one of the ancient elves of old, is she not?”

“We’ve met already,” he said. “In dreams.”

Dream, she wanted to say. Only one—and not even a dream at that but a meeting in her old room. That meant he was keeping things from the others, and while her mind told her not to trust him, she didn’t mention his lie to the others. 

“Anyways, time’s a little of the essence here,” Carmilla pointed out. “We’re heading to a rift the Wardens opened in a blood magic ritual.”

Blood magic. Distasteful but Rona supposed it did the trick.

“I can help,” Rona offered. 

Carmilla smiled. “You’re coming home with us.”


	6. Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Nightmare feasts on bad dreams, bad memories. It should've kept some of them.

“You still didn’t tell us how you found us,” Carmilla pointed out. The path they all walked was littered with spirits of fear and most attempts at conversation were interrupted by frequent fights. This stretch of the Fade seemed pretty clear, however, and it seemed to be a game to the group to ask Rona a million questions. It almost made her wish she was alone again in the Fade if this was all she had to look forward to on her return.

“I wasn’t looking for you,” Rona repeated, a touch agitated at having to repeat herself. “I noticed that the area of the Fade I was in had less and less spirits so I went in search of them.”

“How would you have returned to the Skyhold portion of the Fade?” Alistair, a warden, asked. “Or whatever it’s called.”

“I have no idea, but sitting in one place and waiting for an exit to suddenly appear didn’t sound like a plan either.” 

“Is that some fancy Fade armor?” Carmilla asked, eyeing her new outfit. 

“No,” Rona replied, figuring the answer wasn’t exactly important at a time like this. The armor Cullen had crafted for her in his dream wasn’t like the kind Vivienne or Solas wore which seemed to be suited for any kind of battle they might encounter. And, unlike the mages she now traveled with, Rona carried no staff. Sure, she assumed staves existed in her time, but it was evident she was never trained for battle as a mage beyond knowing a handful of offensive fire spells. Like all other times before, trying to remember felt miserable, struggling onto a wisp of a memory only for it to slip away every time. 

Apparently, the group had taken her one-word answer as the end to the game, and Carmilla decided to get Rona up to speed by summarizing the events of the last few hours: the siege of Adamant, the Grey Warden’s blood ritual, the fall into the Fade, and the found memories the Nightmare had let her find.

Memories.

“It stole your memories?” Rona asked. Carmilla nodded. “Why?”

“The Divine… or spirit, or whatever she is said that it feeds off them and each one makes it stronger. This part of the Fade, it owns it. That’s how powerful it is,” Carmilla explained. Rona was sure the other mages could’ve explained it with a little more detail than the bow-wielding rogue, but Vivienne seemed intent on keeping her distance, Hawke spent most of the time bickering with the warden, and Solas didn’t attempt to talk much with Rona there, as pointed out by Cassandra as they traveled. 

They reached the mouth of a cave like structure, guarded by large and powerful spirits. Carmilla and the others didn’t wait a moment before they leapt into action, the Inquisitor issuing out commands on the battlefield to her companions. Vivienne seemed content taking her magic into close quarters while Solas stayed behind, providing support for the non-magic combatants. Rona, though, felt at a loss of what to do. Most of her time in the Fade thus far had been spent hiding and running from any harmful or actively malevolent spirits. The spells she did use were mainly to slow them down as she knew she wasn’t strong enough to take many on. She just didn’t have that kind of energy to keep up fighting for as long as she had been in the Fade.

Considering she might get out, she fought this time.

She felt a surge of a barrier around her as she ran in, casting about walls of fire or pinpointed explosions, aiming more to distract or off balance the spirits rather than to cause real damage to them, but apparently that was just enough to make her a target. The barrier helped some, as did her new armor, but she still left the fight worse for the wear with cuts and scrapes and invisible bruises. 

Carmilla wasted no time after the fight to head through the cave. Rona was the last to follow through, tired and feeling drained from the fight. At the mouth of the cave was Solas who wordlessly handed her two potions. One was most certainly a lyrium potion, that she could sense right away. The other looked heartier and, considering the circumstances, was most likely a health potion, and she downed them as fast as she could. The result wasn’t comparable to being naturally rested or healthy, but it certainly helped.

She and Solas just stood there for a moment, looking at each other as the sounds of footsteps from the others faded off.

“Why didn’t you tell your friends the truth?” she asked once it became obvious he wasn’t going to say anything first. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t answer.

“You’re an outlier I didn’t expect to encounter in this age,” he said instead, stepping around her question. “If you make it out of here and if it’s safe, I’ll tell you what I know. I’m afraid it might not be much, though. I don’t hold all the answers.”

He moved on, his steps hurried to catch up to the group. Rona couldn’t shake the feeling she knew something about him or why that feeling felt so bad, so negative. It made even less sense considering he was of this time and that she was not. How could she have a feeling of someone she obviously could not have known before? She might’ve considered it being just intuition had it not felt like a real, personal feeling she had experienced before.

She didn’t wait long to catch up with everyone as well, only to find them caught up in a battle, surrounded by the shadows and a spirit she couldn’t recognize. So long as it was keeping her and the others from returning to the physical world, nothing else mattered more than to join the fight.

The spirit played its games, disappearing and reappearing with more of its cohorts through the fight. Fighting like this was strange, alien to her, and everything seemed to happen all too fast. It wasn’t easy for the shadows to knock her down or inflict damage to herself. At points, it seemed more like she was a punching bag, a distraction for the lesser spirits so that the others could go against the aspect of the Nightmare.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the aspect go down, an arrow struck in its chest as it fell apart into a pile of remains. 

“Let’s go!” Carmilla yelled, waving her hand at everyone to get to the glowing green rift. Cassandra and Vivienne were closest, making it to the rift first. Rona, however, was on the furthest side of the battlefield. 

One by one, the people of the party disappeared through the rift until it was just Rona, Hawke, and Carmilla left. That’s when the path to the rift was obstructed, the Nightmare hovering about it.

“You’re,” the Nightmare strained to say, “not going anywhere.”

“Run for it,” Hawke whispered. The three of them took a step or two back from the spirit and rift for good measure. “I can hold it off.”

“Bullshit. We’re all getting out of here,” Carmilla told her. 

The Nightmare began to creep towards them and suddenly Solas’s past words of warning echoed in Rona’s head. She didn’t like her chances, but it was better than either of these women staying behind in the Fade. Rona, at least, could manage surviving in the Fade.

“No. You two are getting out of here,” Rona told them. 

“You can’t take it on,” Hawke said. “You could barely handle yourself on the battlefield.”

“I’m not going to _fight_ it.” Rona stepped between the two women and walked towards the spirit. It was hard to separate herself from her emotions, her heart still beating fast from the fight and every nerve still on edge, feeling as if disaster was about to strike. 

She closed her eyes and reached out to the Nightmare not with her hands but her mind and will. Rona could feel the Nightmare locking onto her, touching her mind as she attempted to influence it. Her fears surfaced and she struggled to face them rather than push them down. It fed off bad memories, so she looked at her fears with a different stance; she accepted her past experiences, even as few as they were, the good and the bad. She brought up the memory of her room falling apart, the only world she had really known since waking there, and thanked the experience for letting her out of the confined safety and prison.

Her ears picked up the sounds of footsteps, getting further and further away until they were gone. She opened her eyes and saw the rift still open, but the moment she let go of the Nightmare and tried to escape for herself, it blocked her path, leaning in close to her until she was within arm’s reach of it.

“You’re certainly noble, aren’t you?” it asked. 

“I am who I am,” she replied. It was looking for a hold on her, a way in. She refused to let that happened. 

“You’re brave, at the least,” it told her. Its voice echoed in the chamber they fought in, sounding more like a thought in her head than an external noise, but it was just a trick of the sound. Behind it, both the sound and light from the rift began to fade until it was no more. She was still stuck. “Ah, there it is, your fear. You know, I’ve hoarded a few of your memories as well. Quite… delectable.”

Rona tried to swallow, a dry lump in her throat getting in the way. 

“You had so many fears. It was a feast I drew out, biding my time,” it said. From the corner of her eye, she could see the shadows lining up behind her in a half circle, trapping her. “Let me give you a taste.”

The shadows she could see began to form into people, gaining shape and color. She could spot their pointed ears, their marked faces, their rags and robes, the makeshift weapons they gripped so tightly that their own hands bled. The sight pulled at something inside her, some taunt string that threatened to break and send her tumbling to the ground.

As if the voices came from her own mind, she heard, “Why did we stay? Why did we have to suffer under you as others were set free?”

Another voice added, “We could’ve survived had you let us go.”

“You abandoned us. Did we mean nothing to you?”

Tears rolled down Rona’s cheeks despite her best efforts. More voices chimed in until she became overwhelmed, each one forming their own taunt string until it felt as if she was bound in a cocoon of them. Perhaps she actually was, the Nightmare almost resembling a spider.

“Please, please stop!” Rona found herself crying, begging. Her gut felt run through, her heart felt broken. 

“If you insist.”

\---

“Perhaps she perished? I haven’t heard of someone going head to head with a demon like that. Even the Warden and I were completely taken by a Sloth demon back at the Ferelden Circle.” Every muscle felt on edge at the mention of the Ferelden Circle and he could hear Leliana muttering out a sorry his way at his obvious discomfort though she continued on with her theory. “And that was nowhere near the magnitude you’re saying this Nightmare was. Besides, I’ve had no more reports of her in any dreams. Isn’t that right Commander?” 

“It’s been a few weeks since our last encounter,” he told the group at the war table. Most of the time, it was just himself, Leliana, Josephine, and the Inquisitor at the war table, sometimes plus one other person. Today, it also had Vivienne, Solas, Dorian, and a couple of former Circle mages. None of them seemed able to come up with an answer or solution. The sun had passed behind the mountains, the only light in the room being a few torches and candles.

“She saved my life,” Carmilla said, as if everyone had forgotten. The way some of the people spoke, Cullen couldn’t fault her if that was what she thought. The Inquisitor raised up her hand, showing off the glowing mark. “And without me, without this thing, this Inquisition would be screwed in fighting Corypheus. We owe it to her to at least not settle on the worst case scenario and forget about her.”

“I’ve searched the Fade as best I could,” said Solas. “I’ve had trouble finding her. Or her body. There might still be some hope in helping her, but I’m not sure what we can do if or when we find her, Inquisitor. Getting in and out of the Fade, much less surviving, was all luck.”

“I hate to agree with the elf, but this time I do,” Vivienne said. She stood tall and engaged though Cullen knew her views on the subject as a whole considering they were more often than not similar to his own. “If you even try to attempt what you achieved with your mark back at Adamant, there’s no guarantee of her finding the exit while there’s an utmost certainty of demons leaking out from the Fade. Are we to risk the lives of those in the Inquisition for this one ancient mage? Corypheus is an ancient magister. How are we to know she is not like him, perhaps some devout worshiper of the Dalish gods with an ulterior motive?” 

Carmilla looked influenced by Vivienne’s words, responding with only a pout.

“Have we not sacrificed lives over other avenues of knowledge?” Dorian argued. “Not on purpose, but my points still the same.”

“Our scouts and guards have been trained to deal with demons and rifts,” Cullen added. Dorian nodded in agreement. 

“I don’t believe there’s any one right answer here. My lady, I believe this is up to you,” Josephine said, turning to Milla. 

After a long moment of silence, the crowd around the war table waiting for her answer, Carmilla decided, “We’re at least going to try. If it takes too many resources… we call it off.”

\---

Solas sat at the edge of the Nightmare’s considerably smaller domain – looking more like a rocky arena now – the spirit having shifted its form to match its new, lessened strength. It wrapped around Rona in the form of a large snake, the elven woman seemingly unconscious in its grasp, her head lolled to the side. He couldn’t make out the words she said from this distance, but he watched as her lips formed words. He could only catch one word said over and over again: _abelas_ – sorry.

He watched and waited, struggling to pick which path he wanted to take, whether he was to save her or leave her behind. She wouldn’t last much longer like that, trapped by the Nightmare like some meal it was to pick at until satisfied. Already, he could feel her life energy waver, the ripples in the Fade she caused becoming softer, weaker, and fewer in between. 

She had been a trusted ally, but there was no way to know how she’d react if she found out who he really was, what he had done. 

Against his better judgement, he pried her away from the spirit and took her to a safer realm of the Fade, one far away from the Nightmare’s and Skyhold’s grasp, somewhere he could hide her until the time was right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had so much fun writing this chapter! I'm so glad people are still reading this. Thank you for commenting, if you have, and if you haven't, please let me know your thoughts! I'd love to hear what you're thinking or what you think might happen next. I'm just so excited about getting to the really fun stuff here!!!
> 
> Again, thanks for reading! <3


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